1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to analysis of seismic data and, more particularly, to the contemporaneous use of seismic data in the pre-stack and post-stack seismic domain.
2. Description of the Related Art
Seismic prospecting generally involves generating one or more sets of seismic data regarding a subterranean geological formation. A variety of techniques analyze seismic data with the goal of identifying characteristics of the geological formation that may indicate the presence of hydrocarbon deposits. These techniques may generally referred to as “processing” and “interpretation” tasks.
One common technique is called “stacking.” Stacking is a process in which traces (i.e., seismic data recorded from a single channel of a seismic survey) are added together from different records to reduce noise and improve overall data quality. Characteristics of seismic data (e.g., time, frequency, depth) derived from stacked data are referred to as “post-stack” but are referred to as “pre-stack” if derived from unstacked data. More particularly, the seismic data set is referred to as being in the pre-stack seismic domain if unstacked and in the post-stack seismic domain if stacked. Note that the seismic data set can exist in both domains simultaneously in different copies.
The pre-stack and post-stack seismic domains are tightly interrelated. Post-stack seismic data is obtained by stacking pre-stack seismic data that have been “corrected” or “migrated” with a velocity model. A velocity model is obtained from the seismic moveout with the offset of the kinematically exploitable pre-stack seismic events (usually primary reflections). Primary reflectors are structural indicators in the post-stack seismic domain. Structural information can help distinguishing between primary and multiple energies for velocity analysis and update, and so on.
Historically, the pre-stack seismic domain has been perceived as specific to the seismic processing task while the post-stack seismic domain is associated with the seismic interpretation task. For various reasons, the two domains were generally treated independently. However, dependencies are a fact and their exploitation could be hugely beneficial for both the processing and interpretation tasks.
Interpretation of post-stack seismic domain data includes a “visualization” of the data. Typically, such a visualization is a graphical display of the data. Some software packages permit contemporaneous display of the seismic data in multiple seismic domains, and each display may be referred to as a “visualization canvas.” A number of software applications are commercially available for the express purpose of creating visualizations of post-stack seismic data for analysis. Some of these packages include features that permit, for instance, the analyst to rotate the visualization about a specified point.
The present invention is directed to resolving, or at least reducing, one or all of the problems mentioned above.